By Kayla Zhu J Source
Across industry organizations, newsrooms and campus media, journalists are re-examining best practices on reporting on mental health and suicide
When Renata D’Aliesio started working on her 2015 investigation into the number of Canadian soldiers who had served in Afghanistan and died by suicide, the first step she took was searching for similar large-scale journalism projects on suicide.
When she couldn’t find any examples, she turned to available resources on covering suicide. She reached out to mental health experts who worked with veterans to run the project idea by them and determine how it could be done responsibly.
D’Aliesio, an investigative reporter at the Globe and Mail, said that initial work, which started in 2014, took a couple of months. “We had to make sure that collectively, as a group at the Globe and Mail, we felt that we could move forward with such a project in a responsible way,” she said.
The resulting series, The Unremembered, revealed that at least 62 Canadian soldiers and veterans took their own lives after serving in Afghanistan.
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